Roxburgh and Boren explain being missional for the right reasons

Introducing the Missional Church: What It Is, Why It Matters, and How to Become One by Alan J. Roxburgh and M. Scott Boren is the most comprehensive book on missionality to-date. 

While there is no shortage of new works with “missional” in the title these days, many approach missionality as a growth model or trend (similar to the seeker-sensitive or house church movements, for instance). Being missional is talked about as a means of capitalizing on culture; many who are making missional products do not understand missionality as an ecclesial expression that is inherently, theologically superior to the expressions of American Christianity’s recent generations or that of Christendom as a whole.

Roxburgh and Boren are able to move beyond typical missional-for-growth fluff as they use two central chapters — “Why Do We Need Theology? Missional Is about God, Not the Church” and “God’s Dream for the World: What Is a Contrast Society?” — to explain that the shift toward missionality is not for the sake of the Church; rather, it is for the sake of God and a more faithful response to God’s objective, consistent desires for His people.

In the final third of the book, Roxburgh and Boren present the Missional Change Model, a strategy and timetable for encouraging existing churches to become missional ministries. This model applies to existing churches that could potentially turn toward missionality, but there are principles in this section that can be used by church planters and pastors of young churches as well.

Painting pictures of God’s Kingdom

This morning I took part in the monthly meet-up of Northwest Hothouse. Hothouse is a group of pastors, para-church ministry leaders, and community organizers who come together to explore what it means to live and lead missionally in our particular contexts. A lot of inspiring ideas and experiences are shared in these meetings. Dynamics like that of Hothouse — intelligent, imaginative collaboration — get me all the more excited about life in ministry.

 

One of the big questions — it was more of a dilemma, really — that arose this morning was this: What does it mean to appreciate missionality that is “slow steeping” and relational (not an imperialistic take-over), while recognizing that people have urgent, immediate needs to experience communion with Christ?

 

This is my attempt to answer that question.

 

First, I think it is important to give Jesus the respect of focusing our attention where he asked us to place it — on the Kingdom of God. It is the Kingdom, not a cosmic transaction, that is at the heart of the Christian story. The latter relates to the former as a means to an end. To say it differently, any truthful soteriology is entirely grounded in truthful eschatology. To say it differently still, the big picture is about the resurrection and reconciliation of creation, not “soul-winning” and an escapist afterlife.

 

We live in a Kingdom of God story. The Kingdom has come, and the Kingdom is coming. In New Testament studies this is referred to as “the already-but-not-yet.” To reverse the order, what we see around us is not as good as it gets, but it is the current creation which God has covenanted to resurrect. Creation matters because it’s creation that has been, is, and will be the project of God.

 

Like I said, it’s a Kingdom of God story we are part of. And the future of this story requires both announcement and fulfillment — pictures painted and promises kept. There is rootedness to this idea. We see the interplay of announcement and fulfillment in the words of the prophets and the teachings of Jesus — an urgent announcement to transform our ways immediately so that we can join in the gradual, progressive entrance of God’s Kingdom. Whether along the rivers of Babylon or during the Sermon on the Mount, new pictures of the Kingdom have been painted, and those pictures have inspired, befuddled, and expanded imagination. Picture are painted (immediate action) about a new reality that is being created (gradual, sequential movement). But we would be off the mark to divorce the picture-painting act from the larger sequential movement.

 

When we paint pictures, we are doing more than more than simply describing something that will someday be. Our descriptions are entities in their own right. Pictures are real. We can hold them on various levels. Pictures have thingness, yes?

 

Because they have thingness, they also have an irrevocability to them. When we see important images, they stick with us. They delight us. They haunt us. They inspire us. They speak of new realities while being themselves a new realities created. When the pictures we paint are real and true, the audiences to our picture-painting cannot help but own them in an irrevocable way. Even if we paint an image of the future, that future has just happened in that it is now been seen or heard. That is the in-breaking of the future into the present. The future exists in that its picture has been called into existence.

 

Some of the most powerful moments within our Kingdom of God story have come about when the future is called into the present through picture-painting. Again, I think of the prophets of an exilic Israel sitting along the rivers of Babylon and being filled with the dream of universal exile — a sensus plenior exile. I think also of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Did the future of which King dreamed exist at the time of that speech? We might be inclined to say that it hadn’t or even still hasn’t. There were countless race riots yet to come after that speech, and some racial tension remains today. But I imagine that if we asked those who were there in person to hear King’s dream, they would tell us that something that hadn’t existed prior to that speech suddenly did as King spoke. A new reality came into existence. And many events that have helped to fulfill that dream since the day of the speech happened only because the dream was announced.

 

Pictures create futures.

 

An unimagined, unannounced Kingdom never comes. 

 

We live in a culture that believes talk is cheap. We form a dichotomy between words and actions. Falling to the temptations of our distrust toward the spoken word, we leave little room for speech-acts — for words that not only describe future realities, but also are, in and of themselves, immediate realities. We need to reclaim the speech-act as an essential, prophetic component to our Kingdom of God story.

 

Sometimes picture-painting happens in front of a large crowd (like King’s dream), but more often it happens in family rooms, coffeehouses, and bars, with a handful of people or just one person at a time. When the picture is beautiful and real and true, there is nothing those small audiences can do but grapple with the picture’s irrevocability and possibly begin to draw that picture, or a continuation of it, themselves. 

 

As Kingdom of God pictures are painted, we experience an in-breaking of tikkun olam in two ways: our description of where the story is heading is itself an invitation to join the story, and new reality is created because we have chosen to paint.

 

It is amazing how many people — whether self-proclaimed Christians or people who are unfamiliar with God’s story — well up with hope when they hear the good news about God’s commitment to, and intentions for, creation. While it is possible to dream aloud this good news and still be met with hostility or rejection, I believe that real good news is generally better received than the incomplete good news, the news that explains a cosmic transaction but does not explain where the story is heading. As I said earlier, all truthful soteriology is grounded in truthful eschatology. 

 

When the story as a whole is told, most neighbors who disagree with us are still generally glad to be our neighbors. We can be very “Abrahamically effective” like that, when we tell the whole story, the real good news.

 

So how do we face the balance of being an incarnational presence for the long-haul in our ministry context while acting on our concern for so many who have not received what God has for them? We dream out loud. We paint pictures about God’s covenant faithfulness to creation, the Kingdom that is growing, and God’s continuous tikkun olam mission. We demonstratively look forward to a bright future, and in so doing create new present realities that cause people to hope in a way they’ve never hoped before. 

 

John Piper’s determinism

Rather than exhaust myself in responding to the latest John Piper mishap in which his Calvinism impacted his interpretation of current events, I’m going to re-direct to people who’ve already articulated well-thought responses — Julie and Greg Boyd, as well as Bill Birch’s thoughts on determinism in general.

To all of that, the only thing I want to add is this: leave room for nuance. Is God capable of authoring that tornado in the Twin Cities? Yes, God can create tornados. But, as Boyd points out, we have a Mark 4 account of Jesus needing to rebuke a storm.

I would feel differently about Piper’s latest incident if he had come forward as a prophetic voice, saying that he discerned that God’s correction was the cause of this particular storm. But my interpretation of this incident is conditioned by Piper’s gibberish about the crash of the I-35 bridge (two years ago in this same area) also fitting into his controlling meta-narrative. 

Piper is being guided by his Calvinism, which is a deterministic meta-narrative — not only a large meaning-of-it-all story (overarching or grand narrative) but a larger meaning into which every small story and incident feeds. In other words, to Piper or any thorough Calvinism, there is no such thing as a storm that lacks meaning. 

So why, then, does Jesus rebuke the storm in Mark 4? And why does he pray for God’s will to happen on earth as it does in heaven? If we’re all puppets within a controlling meta-narrative, there’s no purpose for that prayer (or any other prayer, for that matter).

Leave room for nuance. Brace yourself for a reality in which free will and spiritual warfare are practical realities in our midst. Leave room for God to be the author of various incidents — even incidents over which we feel hurt or confusion. Leave some room for “the devil did it,” because every now and then it’s true. And leave room to grasp that we are free to love and be loved (as well as to abuse that freedom), and storms might just happen because they happen.

We can ask for discernment, seeking the Spirit’s guidance for answers and understanding. But we don’t always need it, and we certainly don’t always receive it. And in those cases when disaster strikes, and the cause could be any number of things and we simply don’t know which it was, we can do better than to settle for deterministic meta-narrative.

Helpful ministry resource: Organic Community

This past weekend I read Organic Community by Joseph Myers. The book was released in 2007, so I’m probably a bit late to the party, but after breezing through this compelling book I have to say better late than never. 

Myers’ book is separated by chapters that describe eight different characteristics of an environment in which community develops organically — patterns (descriptive, not prescriptive), participation (individual, not representative), measurement (story, not bottom-line), growth (sustainable, not bankrupt), power (revolving, not positional), coordination (collaboration, not cooperation), partners (edit-ability, not accountability), and language (verb-centric, not noun-centric).

While Myers stresses that he’s not writing a “how-to” book, his book is filled with examples that are practical enough to be used by most anyone, never slipping into ideas that are either too vague or too specific to transcend context.

One of my biggest disappointments with a lot of the church planting or church model books that circulate is the theological views from which they’ve been written. Myers’ book, however, is rooted in sound theology. His central point is to move away from a “master plan” approach to ministry, toward responsible and flexible preparation that  partners with God to engage possibilities and develop the future.

Overall, the book was quite a helpful challenge to me — reminding me that people are to be held with an open hand. They may or may not fit cleanly into ministry models and strategies, and in those cases it’s the models that need to budge.

The combination of practical suggestion and thoughtful theology in Organic Community was refreshing enough that I’m adding the book to my recommended “curriculum” for people with whom I’m ministering (along with Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point and Tim Keel’s Intuitive Leadership).

When mystery and revealed truth are held in tension

Bob’s recent post on the level-headed nuance of a faith that admits to having both questions and answers still has me clapping my hands a few days later.

I so strongly want to echo his sentiment here in Seattle, where in the last year I’ve realized the spiritual landscape is dominated by people who “know” that Jonathan Edwards’ wrath-god gives us cancer and predestines those He hates for hell, and some folks who read about five pages of Derrida, wet themselves, and are now convinced that we can’t accept any of Jesus’ claims and expectations as normative.

The only difference between these groups, I suppose, is that the latter group will at least admit that they are only loosely affiliated with Christ and his Way.

Is it really a mystery why so few people in Seattle follow Christ when those who claim to be Christians spout such sub-Christian views on life and faith? Is there any room for nuance between extremes in a city that is said to be well educated and literate?

Without sounding like too much of a martryr, I should note that there are others (like these friends) who are trying to make Christ’s Way known in this city — not settling for wrath-god or feeble wallowing in uncertainty — but too often it feels like it’s the sub-gospels that dictate the spiritual climate in this city, and the rest of us are left to play by crooked rules.

All that to say I’m thankful and refreshed by Bob’s words, and hope that the dynamic that exists within Evergreen in Portland would find deep roots in several faith communities here in Seattle.

Non-conflicting absolutes

You can read Julie’s recent seminary paper regarding non-conflicting absolutes for her Old Testament Ethics course. While the subject matter is dry, Julie takes the paper in an interesting and necessary direction — examining how dualism and a misconfiguration of original sin (a paradigm of judicial guilt rather than systemic brokenness) within more Augustinian theological strands has led to some sketchy presumptions in the study of biblical or Christian ethics.

What’s a sustainable faith project, anyway?

From the Paradigm site:

What does it mean when we say that Paradigm is a “sustainable faith project”?

 

In order to understand what Paradigm is all about, we need to know a few things about systems and connectedness.

 

A lot of things in this world operate as systems — they’re systemic in nature. Economics. Environmental degradation. Disease. The impact that broken families have on multiple generations. Physical abusiveness. Marital infidelity and sexual corruption. Substance abuse. The list goes on.

 

To focus on one as an example, think of economics. Individuals are free to make their own financial choices with their money. And we’d agree that an individual’s own decisions have a tremendous impact on his or her financial well-being. We’d also agree, however, that, regardless of how much or how little we have in our piggy banks, we’re affected by wide-scale peaks and recessions. And peaks and recessions don’t happen out of nowhere — they’re the result of a series of individual decisions.

 

Individuals create systems, and systems impact individuals. Just ask the children of abusive parents or divorcees. Or the family of a pornography-addict or drug user. Or a kid who’s growing up in the midst of AIDS and genocide. They’ll all tell you that individuals contribute to systems, and systems shape individuals.

 

The great myth within humanity is that any of us are ever alone, that we can do whatever we want because “It’s not going to hurt anyone else.” It is the central deception of sin, isolation. But the truth is that we cannot get away with doing, thinking, or saying a single thing that isn’t going to impact someone, somewhere down the road.

 

We are connected.

 

It’s clear in the stories of Scripture: sinfulness led to deadliness, which brought about more sinfulness yet. The cycle continued — a momentum of corruption and decay. But as people who believe in Jesus as Messiah for the world, we believe that his death and resurrection inaugurated a new Way. The Apostle Paul candidly writes about this in the fifth and sixth chapters of his letter to the Romans: the cycle of sin and death have been replaced with a cycle of faithfulness and life, and Christ’s followers are to further the new cycle of living. 

 

When asked by a student if Christ-followers are at liberty to contribute to the old cycle (beginning of Romans 6), Paul goes on a tangent that can pretty much be summed up as, “Absolutely not! If they do, there was no point in anything Jesus did.”

 

We know all about how cycles of sin corrupt friendships, families, cities, and people over generations. But what does it look like when the cycle that Christ began is continued today? What does it look like for people to care for the environment in a way that makes their neighbors do the same? Or for a man to respect and empower women in a way that causes his sons to do an even better job of it than he does? What if a group of people stepped back from materialism and pooled their finances to create an orphanage in an area of need, and that orphanage went on to care for generations and generations of children who need love and care? And what if children who were seemingly destined to be aborted were instead allowed to live through adoption, and became the very leaders of this movement?

 

And what if the people who were engaged in such a movement weren’t acting out of empty human-centrism or political agenda, but were letting it be known that the gospel of Jesus is the driving force behind the change? What if it was announced that this movement was about God’s plan coming about on Earth as it does in heaven? What if the participants of this new life were constantly being nourished by the words of Scripture, dwelling in prayer, and taking part in life-giving spiritual practices? What if these people had the opportunity to be discipled by spiritual directors whose interest was for them to fully realize their identity as Christ-followers, and all of the acceptance and forgiveness that comes with that?

 

What if all of that came to be?

 

Well, we might call that a sustainable movement. We would recognize that what we were seeing was the sort of faithfulness that spreads life and hope in the lives of friends and neighbors and families. Remember how systems work, how individual lives are always influenced by systems around them? This cycle of faithfulness and life would inevitably improve the world of these friends, neighbors, and families. Those people, in turn, would have the chance to join God’s people, take up Jesus’ Way, and join the mission. (Maybe if people saw how beautiful Jesus’ Way can be — what a difference it can make in the world — more of them would take seriously who Jesus claimed to be and the movement he claimed to start, don’t you think?)

 

In the end, what we’d have is this: Christ’s faithfulness creating an invitation to his Way for each of us; our faithfulness modeling that new life in Christ’s Way and tangibly spreading the invitation as we better the lives of those around us; and others accepting that invitation to the Way, faithfully participating in it, and bringing about yet another stage in this ever-growing movement. And so on and so forth.

 

It’s a sustainable faith project.

 

It’s ridiculously simple, yet it’s radical and difficult in that it calls people to actually obey the instructions of Christ. It takes leaving a life of selfishness. It requires shaking off the myth that we’re a bunch of little automatons whose actions don’t contribute to one of two systems — the cycle of sin and death, and that of faithfulness and life.

 

That’s the Paradigm vision: to faithfully live out true life in the Way of Jesus, inviting those we impact to freely choose to acknowledge Jesus as Messiah and join the mission. It’s a gift that keeps on giving, this sustainable faith project of ours.

 

The plan for bringing this about in our area of North Seattle is to tell and learn the message of Scripture in our gatherings, deepen our understanding of God and our relationships with others in communities, and to act out the redemptive message of Christ through local involvement. 

 

Is Paradigm a “church”? Yes and no, depending on what you associate with that word. If someone is looking to be part of a church, Paradigm could be a viable conclusion. But a person who is already involved in a church is welcome to take part in any or all of the three things we do (gatherings, communities, and local involvement). And a person who dislikes church might enjoy Paradigm (though we acknowledge that some people dislike pretty much everything, and it’s only a matter of time before they dislike us too). 

 

We are asking people who join Paradigm’s core team to make Paradigm their primary spiritual community and to participate in each of the three events involved in our mission, but we have no form of “membership” beyond that. We accept donations in our gatherings and through mail, and people who tithe are welcome to direct that giving toward our mission.

 

In all, we hope the project is a success, that faithfulness leads to life, and life to faithfulness.

Learning at Paradigm

The text below is taken from Paradigm’s website. Paradigm — in case you didn’t know — is a ministry that Julie and I are involved with in Seattle. Our vision: to create sustainable faith in Seattle. We’re inviting people to hear God’s story through interactive liturgy (Sunday night gatherings), deepen their understanding of the story (Paradigm communities during the week) and bring a bit of heaven to earth for our local and global neighbors (missional involvement opportunities).

We started a few months ago, and we’re very much still in the process of putting together a core team to serve as the nucleus for the ministry. Even during the process of inviting people to the team, we are gathering on Sunday nights to pursue God through a lot of worship forms and spiritual practices that we see becoming part of Paradigm’s long-term identity.

If you’re in Seattle and want to come by, we meet at 1059 NE 96th St in Seattle (fairly equidistant to Northgate Mall and Green Lake), in a building we share with Maple Leaf Church, at 6:00PM Sundays. (I feel like there should some sort of pithy gimmick here — “Mention that you heard about us through this blog and you’ll receive a free [something].”)

Or maybe you’re reading this and you’re not in Seattle, but you suddenly realize one of two things: 1) your newfound calling to pack up your things and move to Seattle to join us in our endeavor, or 2) the inclination to gently nudge your Seattle-area friends to check out Paradigm (maybe try something really subtle — “Paradigm is the greatest thing ever and the future of the universe depends on whether you go and take part in what they’re doing”). 

Um, yeah, we’re going to want you to act on either/both of those impulses.

In all seriousness though, we have been, are, and will be ridiculously grateful for anyone who wants to take a risk and give some time to a ministry that has the potential to make a significant impact in Seattle. Let me know if that’s you.

————-

(From the Paradigm site)

We want to relentlessly pursue truth. It’s our belief that God is pleased when people are willing to dig deeper than status quo assumptions, ask big questions, and engage the mystery and grandeur of God and His story.

We’ve made a few central commitments in how we seek truth at Paradigm. First, we want to embrace both left- and right-brain thought processes as we study, reflecting on God’s story in both creative and linear ways.

Seeking truth is no solo job. We pursue truth in the context of community, where we can not only learn from one another, but also apply truth in and through the community (because truth is lived and not merely thought).

Learning at Paradigm is holistic and relational. Sometimes it is also difficult and limited. Paradigm is a community where people are free to engage mystery, raise questions, and run their fingers along the wounds in Jesus’ hands. And sometimes we raise questions to which our only honest answer is, “I don’t know.”

“I don’t know” can be a great theological claim.

We’re not pursuing truth for the sake of self-assurance, textbook answers, and power games. We aren’t creating circular smokescreen doctrines. We’re engaging a complex world with a powerful, mysterious Gospel. We have found life-changing hope in God’s Story and life in the Way of Jesus, and we want that truth to be lived, told, explored, and known.

There are four main resources we use to seek and verify truth: Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience. The technical term for these four “truth-decectors” is the Wesleyan Quadrilateral.

In Scripture we have the most tangible, uniquely authoritative expression of God’s revelation. For this reason, Scripture is the starting point of our Quad. Scripture provides us with the narrative of Israel and some of the earliest communities that followed Jesus and built his Kingdom. The Bible explains to us God’s character and articulates what it looks like to become part of the people of God. As God’s Spirit illumines it, we’re able to use Scripture wisely in our context today.

God gives us intelligence and welcomes us to use it. We naturally bring our cognitive ability and framework (our reason) into our handling and application of Scripture, understanding of God, and observation of ourselves and our world. We want to worship God with our thoughtfulness, as we love Him enough to observe His work in this world.

God’s Holy Spirit is available to Christ-followers as a Helper — consulting, convicting, encouraging, ministering, and illumining truth through all different kinds of mediums and situations. As individuals and as a community, we are called to remain sensitive to the Spirit’s personal and particular guidance. Through a deep experience of God’s Spirit we gain the wisdom and discernment needed to serve God in our culture and context today.

We’re connected to the tradition of God’s people throughout the centuries and around the globe. As we pursue truth, it’s important that we look beyond our own context and learn from the wisdom of other faithful believers. By seeing how other Christians have understood truth, we’re able to affirm and adopt many of their conclusions. We’re also free to recognize and correct misguiding thoughts of past Christians — moving forward into a healthier understanding of, and relationship with, our God.

By holding the four components of the Quad together in dynamic community, we continuously learn and grow in our understanding of who we are, who God is, and what is going on in the world.

Julie addresses the link between complementarianism and Calvinism

Calvinism and complementarianism are the focus of Julie’s latest blog post. She writes from the experience of someone who has emerged from the portrait of determinism’s god, into a relationship of true interaction with a God of pathos. You should take a moment to reflect on her perspective.

Interacting with Justification by N.T. Wright – Chapter Three

Wright’s third chapter in Justification, “First-Century Judaism: Covenant, Law and Lawcourt,” is an attempt to explain that first-century Jews (the main characters and audiences of the New Testament) were more concerned with experiencing deliverance from exile (an exile the Jewish people had been experiencing even after returning to their land, as they were still under Roman occupation) by way of David’s promised son. While first-century Judaism was not ignorant to ideas of transcendence and afterlife, those issues were being overshadowed by more pressing physical, political concerns. In other words, first-century Jews, unlike many Christians today, were not simply trying to find their ticket to heaven. They expected God to move within history, within their world.

Wright notes that first-century literature illumines us to the fact that Judaism was not a monolithic religion before, during, or after the time of Christ. He speaks of Variegated Nomism – the multiplicity of ways in which first-century Jews were interpreting Israel’s law, constructing theologies of grace, resurrection etc. 

I find this much clear: first-century Judaism was far different from the works-not-grace caricature of Judaism that Martin Luther so unfortunately concocted in order to read the biblical text into his own sixteenth-century world. There is a cost when we use the biblical text so liberally as to form the biblical narrative and characters in our own image, so that they are living out our story rather than us living continuing their story faithfully in our day. Disregard for historical context, authorial intent and the like can lead us in directions as dangerous as the Lutheranism-gone-awry that was experienced in the Holocaust in the early-to-mid-twentieth century – a mere sixty years ago.

Within the “Judaisms” of the first century, there were some who aimed to calculate the moment when God would deliver Israel from exile. Wright notes many of them leaned heavily on Daniel 9 – a prophecy of the end of exile in which an angel tells the main character that exile would not be for the simple seventy years he read about in Jeremiah, but seventy weeks of years (70 X 7). (pgs 57-59)

This, Wright says, is the social milieu into which Paul writes – a group of people who felt that they were living a continued biblical narrative, still in exile but hoping for the end of exile as described in Daniel 9. Yes, these Jews were back in their land, out from captivity in Babylon. Jews were “enslaved” to pagan cultures and customs.

Here the Bishop lets out some of his frustration with Piper and his “ordinary folk”:

“. . . for many, perhaps most, contemporary Western readers of the New Testament (John Piper’s ‘ordinary folk,’ perhaps), the effort required to think into a worldview where people were thinking to themselves, When is God going to do what he’s promised? is all too much, and they shake their heads and settle back into the comfort of a non-historical soteriology the long and short of which is ‘my relationship with God’ rather than ‘what God is going to do to sort out his world and his people.’ Or, alternatively, the question, when will God do what he’s promised? splurges back onto the theological scene in the form of lurid speculations about the Rapture: drive eschatology out the front door, and it will break in through the back window. And with all of these strategies we thereby put ourselves in the position of musicians who, finding the score of a Beethoven symphony, reckon that because the only instruments they possess are guitars and mouth-organs, that must be what Beethoven had in mind. Or, if you like, that because the only music they know is a collection of songs none of which last longer than four minutes, that must be what Beethoven actually intended.” (pg 61)

Can you tell he’s had it with Piper and his “ordinary folk,” and their commitment to make ordinary what should be a very inordinate use of Scripture?

One of the ways in which Wright’s view of justification succeeds is in its incorporation of the New Exodus motif woven throughout the entirety of Scripture. In Chapter Three Wright exegetes Daniel 9 (remember, this is a text that first-century Jews were leaning into for a variety of reasons), and two things become very clear: “righteousness” in this passage is interchangeable with covenant faithfulness, and God’s covenant faithfulness allows Him to stand as “right” (faithful) when His covenant people are not (allowing the curse of exile as promised in the covenant) as well as to declare “right” (lawcourt language) an unfaithful people (allowing exodus) – on the basis of God’s own covenant faithfulness, not the people’s.

That doesn’t sound much like Luther’s caricature of works-righteousness, does it? No, this is about a God who is covenantally faithful to the extent that He allows consequences of the covenant (exile) but ultimately restores the covenant on the basis of His own covenant-keeping (allowing exodus). This is the hope of first-century Judaism, and the center of Paul’s writing, that God would declare His people right – an act that, to them, was connected to the political ramification of exodus and the ongoing of narrative of human history.

Wright proceeds to shed light on Piper’s big motif for understanding righteousness and justification, God’s concern for God’s own glory. Here’s one part of Wright’s review of Piper that I found to be particularly funny (and refreshing):

“there is a huge mass of scholarly literature on the meaning of God’s righteousness, and Piper simply ignores it. I am not aware of any other scholar, old perspective, new perspective, Catholic, Reformed, Evangelical, anyone, who thinks that tsedaqah elohim in Hebrew or dikaiosyne theou in Greek actually means ‘God’s concern for God’s own glory. . . . Piper’s attempt to show that there must be a ‘righteousness’ behind God’s ‘covenant faithfulness’ is simply unconvincing. It begins to look as though Piper has simply not understood what covenant faithfulness means, and its enormous significance throughout Scripture.” (pgs 64-65)

Also to my amusement, Wright notes that even J.I. Packer – a notoriously Reformed scholar – slips into the New Perspective when he notes, “The reason why [Isaiah and Psalms] call God’s vindication of his oppressed people his ‘righteousness’ is that it is an act of faithfulness to his covenant promise with them.” (pg 64)

The Bishop proceeds to discuss the role of Israel in God’s plan to put the world to rights. God does not give up on Israel. God does not replace Israel. It is precisely through Israel that God will put the world to rights. Wright notes Piper’s decision to not engage Romans 3 and 4 (chapters centered on Abraham and God’s still-applicable commitment to bless the world through his people). This is consistent with Piper’s evasion of Deuteronomy 27-30, Daniel 9, and the whole of Genesis 15. Piper is not engaging the texts that best clarify that God’s righteousness is His covenant faithfulness.

And it is at this point that I, as a reader, become frustrated on Wright’s behalf. Piper and others within the old perspective have accused Wright of proposing a “complicated” gospel. The danger of that accusation is the implicit notion that Wright is weaving complexities into the biblical narrative. The reality, it seems, is quite the opposite. Wright is merely guilty of engaging more of the biblical narrative in his exegesis and theology. We would do better to call Wright and his gospel “hard-working”or “supremely literate.”

The chapter proceeds with Wright discussing Piper’s construction of a theology of God’s righteousness for God’s own glory. Wright acknowledges that such theology portrays God as Divine Narcissist. In reality God is not a self-absorbed being concerned with making sure that His creation lauds Him; He is an outward-focused giver of love whose tsedaqah elohim is His generous faithfulness to undeserving people who have not been anywhere near as faithful to Him.

The role of Israel and Torah in God’s saving plan is the final theme of the chapter. Wright notes the similarities between E.P. Sanders’ covenantal nomism and Calvinism’s emphasis on covenant and “being in Christ.” Wright esteems the Reformed view for agreeing with Sanders’ take far more than Lutheran exegetes and their construction of Judaism as a religion of works-righteousness.

While often falling in the Reformed camp on many issues, Piper’s handling of Israel is fairly Lutheran; he and his “ordinary folk” may find it easier to create a caricature of Judaism to fit their purposes rather than to study the variety of beliefs within Second Temple Judaism (it seems that Piper is suspicious as to whether much reliable knowledge can be gained from that wealth of material). 

Here Wright chops away at both the old perspective’s antinomianism with which I am so amused and the replacement theology over which I completely fume:

“According to the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said that he had not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it. A Calvinist will find that much easier to grasp than a Lutheran – though it would be interesting to hear an old perspective expositor explain how Jesus’ brisk commands in that great sermon are to be obeyed by his followers without any sense of moral effort, synergism and so on.”

This is where the New Exodus motif within the Pauline corpus becomes so important: it is the blood of the Lamb over our doorposts that spares us and declares us “right” (initial justification), yet we still need to follow God on the path of liberation and deliverance, the Way that brings us from a former identity (Egypt, Eden) to a new humanity (Promised Land, New Jerusalem/complete Kingdom of God). This is covenantal nomism! Following the law (whether it be Torah or that which the Spirit writes on our hearts) is not what makes it possible for us to be part of God’s people, but it is the guideline for how to get from Egypt to the Promised Land, from a humanity that lives to propagate systemic sin and death to a humanity that lives to participate in the systemic faithfulness and life. This is synergy! And compared to it, monergy is shown to be nothing more than an inferior half-gospel that leaves everyone standing under a blood-covered doorpost, but never leaving their house for the Promised Land!

As Wright is making abundantly clear, there is no such thing as a soteriology that is divorced from eschatology – God is not rescuing people from the unfolding history of His creation; He is acting within the grand narrative of His creation to save it. Wright says it well when he talks about God’s single plan to save the world through Israel, and when he acknowledges Jesus as the uncompromised “Yes!” to God’s covenant with Israel. Jesus is every bit as much the Son of David as he is the Son of God, and until we come to terms with that Israel and Torah will be a source of confusion in our theology of escapist eschatology. But if we can come to terms with our favorite first-century Jewish carpenter, then we can see what it means that Gentiles join Jewish followers of God in their mission to bless the world.

That mission requires obedience and synergy, covenantal nomism. Jesus paid it all, and now we walk in his Way.